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Newsies Tour Features New Number from Alan Menken & Jack Feldman

October 30th, 2014 | By Ryan McPhee

The boys of Newsies are now on the road, carrying the banner from city-to-city in the Disney tuner’s first national tour. And thanks to composer Alan Menken and lyricist Jack Feldman, one newsie in particular is lucking out with a brand new number for the show. A representative from Disney has confirmed that “Letter from the Refuge,” which did not appear in the film or Broadway run, has been added to the song list.

The number is performed by Crutchie (played on tour by Zachary Sayle) and is set in the second act as he writes a letter to Jack Kelly after being sent away to a detention center. It was written as part of an episode of the American Theater Wing series Working in the Theater titled “The Anatomy of a Song.” Though Feldman and Menken initially wrote it simply as an example for the program, they and Disney Theatrical president Thomas Schumacher later determined that the song had a place in the show.

In addition to Sayle, the current cast of the tour features Dan DeLuca as Jack Kelly, Steve Blanchard as Joseph Pulitzer, Stephanie Styles as Katherine, Angela Grovey as Medda Larkin and Jacob Kemp as Davey.

Newsies follows Jack Kelly, a charismatic newsboy and leader of a ragged band newsies who dreams of a better life far from the hardship of the streets. But when publishing titans Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst raise distribution prices at the newsboys’ expense, Jack finds a cause to fight for and rallies newsies from across the city to strike for what’s right. The musical opened on Broadway in March of 2012 at the Nederlander Theatre, where it played its final performance earlier this year on August 24. The national tour kicked off on October 11 in Schenectady, New York.